Kenneth Folk wrote:
Mark Hampton wrote:
Hi Kenneth,
Do you see a relation between karma and the unconscious ?
I read a quote form Jung recently that raised this question for me : "That which we do not bring into consciousness appears in our lives as fate."
I would say that, strictly speaking, karma is the impersonal law of cause and effect that governs human activity. So it's operating whether we know about it or not. There does seem to be a parallel with Jung's ideas, because in both cases things are different once something is brought into conscious awareness; awakening in the Buddhist sense is said to stop the cycle of rebirth. And one way to understand Buddhist awakening is to think of it as bringing previously unnoticed processes into conscious awareness. Similarly, Jung thought that bringing previously unnoticed processes into consious awareness would change the way we experience our lives as we reintegrate the shadow.
Thanks for the feedback.
There seems to be a connection between karma and fate in relation to this lifetime. From what I understand of karma it needs to be "worked" through via actions in the world i.e. actions that generate positive karma can "cancel out" negative karma. I'm not aware of meditation practises that are claimed to cancel out negative karma but maybe I'm misinterpreting things like metta practises ?
Jung describes the shadow as one of the major aspect of the unconscious. There seem to be quite a lot of western meditation teachers who agree that meditation is not sufficient in and of itself to deal with many aspects of the shadow.
It is tempting to associate how karma in buddhism is "carried across" the cycle of rebirth and how the unconscious can be thought of as being partly inherited and largely developed during early life. If someone did not believe in rebirth, then negative karma inherited at birth could be explained as the shadow. If buddhism does not have good techniques for dealing with the shadow then karma via rebirth would be a way of explaining how even someone awake suffers consequences of previous karma. Maybe I'm stretching this too far ?
You're familiar with Jung's notion of shadow, I wonder if you have thoughts on anima/animus in relation to awakening? As I understand it (very new to the topic) integration of anima/animus after significant integration of the shadow was what Jung associated more closely with awakening.